Mark to the Future, Part 2
by Alexandra926
Summary: AU. Thanks to his little unintended vacation in the past, the crew is still trying to set things back to normal. Normal being a relative term; this is Mark Watney we're talking about, after all.
1. Chapter 1

Did you ever wonder what the difference between a botanist and a horticulturalist is?

To quote my favorite professor here, 'oh, about $37,000 a year.'

He might have intended it to be a joke, but, well, he's not wrong.

So last year, when I finished my bachelor's degree here at University of Chicago, I had to make some decisions. What was my next step?

I can't really seem to explain my decision-making process to anyone; nor would I even seriously attempt it. Because ever since 'that thing that happened that time', as Doc and I have always referred to it, I've had this certain ability.

It's not exactly that I know what's going to happen. Déjà vu isn't the right word for it, either. It's more of an innate knowledge. And it's not all the time. But when my sixth sense speaks up, I've learned to listen. Because it's always right. It's weird as hell.

People might call it luck, or perceptiveness. But it's not. Because believe me, I have plenty of bad luck, too. And when my sixth sense does show me something, it's not like I have any idea how things are going to work out, or even if my decision will have anything close to the outcome that I'm hoping for.

Maybe I should start with an example.

The first time I was absolutely certain that there was something distinctly _not normal_ about this, was a couple of months after I started here.

There I was, a recently transplanted freshman from Northern California, trying to get my bearings. Away from home for the first time in my life. Less than a year after my little 'adventure' in 1986. So I'm settling into life in the dorms, and one of my biology classmates asks me if I want to go to the pub to watch the football game that night. We'd finished studying for tomorrow's test, the first of the semester. A football game sounded like a welcome distraction.

Well, okay, yeah, I was thinking. I even started to stand up. And then, without even thinking about it, I thought about the test we'd been studying for. I saw a flash of it, just a glimpse, mind you, of myself taking that test. Sitting down, tomorrow morning, pencil in hand. But no Scantron. Somehow, I knew, that despite what everyone in the class believed, the professor planned to change gears and give us a fill-in-the-blanks test, instead. And it was going to be a lot harder than any of us thought. The kind of test that called for rote memorization. And I knew something else; the professor was going to be making notes on who she would choose for next semester's assistants, more or less based on this one test. It was going to be make-or-break, and I'd better not screw it up.

What the fuck! I couldn't even begin to explain how I knew. But my ass sat itself right back down, and I told my classmate that I still needed to study some more, sorry. He looked at me like I was crazy, but he shrugged, and left without me. And I hit the books that night, in earnest. Just in case I was right.

By the next morning, I had myself half-convinced that I must have imagined the whole thing, but sure enough, as the professor started handing out the tests, I heard a chorus of groans. And when I saw the test, it was just like the one I'd glimpsed, yesterday. Exactly what I had prepared myself for.

It was one of the strangest things that had ever happened in my life. I tried to convince myself that maybe the professor had pulled this sort of thing on previous classes, and that I'd overheard someone talking about it, and somehow subconsciously filed that piece of information away, only to recall it just in time.

Two days later, when the professor posted the grades, I had the only A. She gave me a sort of appraising look, and a nod. She reminded me of Melissa. And suddenly, I _just knew_ what had happened. What had been happening all along. Ever since I got back.

I already changed my future, once. If anyone has ever been personally acquainted with the possible fluidity of a timeline, it's me. Do I exist on multiple planes of reality now? Maybe I do. Who knows? Did the me from the future find some way to tap into the me from the now, to drop myself a few hints? I don't know. I just know that there _is_ something to it. It's real. I can't explain it, but it exists. I exist. Now I just had to learn to listen to it.

Just like building up a muscle that you didn't use much before, when I started to concentrate on it, I got better at it. Picking up on little flashes of actions that I needed to take. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

Eventually, I got to the point where, occasionally, I could _ask_ my sixth sense questions. And I'd just _know_ the answer. Sometimes it was hard to believe, but if the answer was accompanied by that distinctive, sort of, sense of truth that I'd come to recognize, I learned to accept it as absolute fact, and I don't ignore it. Ever.

What would happen if I _did_ ignore it? I have no idea.

I don't want to find out. Because I've made mistakes, no doubt about that. One of them caused the disappearance of five people. It haunts me. I think about them a lot, even now, and it's been six years now, since I made it home.

I still don't know what happened.

I tried asking Doc about it one time, after the dust had settled somewhat from my grand re-entrance to 2016.

" _I don't remember," Doc said, and I wasn't sure if I believed him, because how could he not remember? But he didn't sound like he was lying, exactly, either._

" _You must remember_ Alex _, at least?" I prodded him. "He worked for you, for crying out loud. We worked together, all of us! He helped us make the hydrazine! The three of us would sit around and talk after we cleaned up the lab. How can you not remember him?"_

" _Sorry, kid," he replied. "It was just," he paused for a moment, thinking, "a really long time ago. My memory's just not what it used to be, you know."_

" _But Doc," I badgered him, "They just… they're gone. Even… even if it's something bad. I just need to know. Please."_

" _I told you already, Mark. I don't remember. I don't know."_

There was something a little strange and scary about his tone, and I knew, without knowing how, that it was time to drop the subject. So I did.

Well, I'd known that Doc was getting along in age, and I guess it shouldn't have come as such a shock, but he was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's, the year after I left for Chicago.

A year and a half after that, he'd suffered a small stroke, and he'd never really managed to come back. He'd rallied a little bit at first, but he never made it out of the rehabilitation hospital he'd landed in, after the stroke. Later, they'd transferred him to a long-term nursing facility.

Mindy still lives nearby, and she emails me to let me know how he's doing, but there's usually not much news. Sometimes, once in awhile, he'll recognize her. Even less often, he'll ask about me. But for the most part, he doesn't know anyone.

So anyway, when I was accepted to the master's program here, it was no big surprise. I'd been the darling of the undergrad program for years by then, and it was more of a question of _what_ exactly I wanted to study at this point.

Was I supposed to be studying taxonomy, I asked myself. **No** , the answer came to me, instantly. What about agriculture? Conservation? **No, and definitely no.** And then I asked myself, what about biotechnology? **Yes.** Alright then. Plant biotechnology, here I come. But my sixth sense wasn't done with me yet.

Do I need to be studying something else, too? **Yes.** And when the flash came to me, that I was going to need a degree in _engineering_ ; well, for the first time, I thought maybe it's pretty fucking stupid to be taking career advice from a magical sixth sense in my brain.

But I re-enrolled as an undergrad anyway, and now I'm halfway through that program as well. Sometimes I think I'll never be finished with school.

And what's it leading me towards, anyway? Why do I feel like I'm on some inevitable march towards some predetermined destiny? If anyone knows that fate and destiny are a crock, it's me.


	2. Chapter 2

**1986**

"What I don't understand," Rick muttered, glancing at the Automat door as they waited for Melissa, "is why we're supposed to blindly _accept_ that Mark just fell off of the face of planet Earth."

"Exactly," agreed Beth, nodding. "Something happened. The night of that school dance."

"The car accident," Chris was thinking out loud. "Melissa and Mark left in the other direction. She was the last one of us who saw him alive," he finished, quietly.

"So you think she knows something," Rick countered.

"I don't know!" he sighed. It was hard to imagine Melissa making anything other than a morally sound decision. He trusted her implicitly, as they all did. "She seems evasive," he said, finally, sounding evasive, himself.

Beth nodded, slowly, despite herself.

"I wasn't there," Rick ventured, sounding guilty. "But I can't believe Mark would have left town without even telling us goodbye. I mean, we had all those plans."

"That part doesn't add up, either," added Beth. "Mark's a BBSer, he could login from anywhere and drop us an email to tell us that he's okay."

Chris looked at the table.

"Maybe… maybe he told Melissa more? Maybe that's why she doesn't seem worried? But… the thing that's bothering me, is.. what if he's _not_ okay?" he ventured, unwillingly.

"An accident, maybe? But nobody saw anything or heard anything ? Melissa wasn't hurt, we know." Beth tried to reason her way through, by talking things out as they occurred to her.

"Not a car accident," Chris said, almost in a whisper. "That lab." He looked at Rick and Beth. "The hydrazine."

Beth's eyes flew open wide.

"You think there was… an explosion?"

"I don't know. Maybe?" Chris said, hesitantly. He hung his head, clearly uncomfortable with the turn that the conversation had taken.

"Well, would Alex even still have a lab to go to work in?" Rick pointed out.

"Good point. But if it wasn't in the lab…" Beth trailed off.

"Hydrazine is really volatile stuff," Rick mused. "Rocket fuel, for crying out loud. Poisonous rocket fuel. He could have breathed the fumes or something and keeled over dead."

"I kind of tend to think you might be onto something," Beth said, still looking down. "Much as I hope you're wrong," she finished with a mumble.

"Because he hasn't sent us an _email_." Chris challenged, frowning. He shook his head.

"Because he's just _gone_ ," she replied. "No goodbyes, just gone. No family or girlfriend or anything or anyone has shown up, looking for him, either. Nothing."

"Well, I did check with Ray," Chris replied, "who was pretty much his only friend in town other than us, and Ray never heard from him again after that night, either."

"It's just like, radio silence," Rick said.

"There's another thing that I was thinking about, too," Beth continued. "Do we even know Mark's last name? Because if it's actually Brown, like his uncle, then there is literally no record of him existing. Doc Brown has no brother, anyway, as far as i can tell."

"Really?" Rick looked puzzled. "Because now that you mention it, I thought it was kind of weird that Mark's parents are supposedly missionaries, or something? But Mark didn't know shit about the Bible, man. Acted like he'd never been inside of a church." Rick flinched, and sat up abruptly.

"What are you guys talking about?"

Melissa stood next to their booth at the Automat, looking down at them with a stern, appraising look.

"Just wondering where Mark has gotten off to," Beth said lightly.

"And I've already told all of you," Melissa snapped. "Drop it."

Chris met Beth's eyes. Beth didn't seem inclined to drop it. Not at all.

* * *

Beth tapped out the last of the commands and saved the file, encrypting and backing it up to a disk. Her Mark research.

There was something just not right with this picture, she thought, once again, as she tried to brainstorm. Every detail she'd tried to investigate so far had turned out to be a dead end.

On paper, it was as though the guy didn't exist. Things that didn't add up tended to annoy Beth Johanssen. She wasn't going to be able to let go of this until she'd figured it out. Mark was her friend. One of their crew. He'd do the same for her, she knew he would have.

If something bad had happened to him, well… she was not prepared to stand idly by and do nothing.

She would find him herself, Melissa be damned.

Everyone leaves a track, here and there. You just had to know where to look. And Beth was good at tracking things down. Public records, library databases; when she could find one solid piece of data to stand on, she could leverage one bit of information to obtain another, and another, until she had a clear picture of what was going on.

But everything about Mark; everything that she had, was useless.

Name? Almost certainly fake. She didn't think he was any actual relation to Emmett Brown at all. She'd traced the Brown family back to the eighteen hundreds, when they'd first arrived in this country and changed their name from Von Braun, and there were no offshoots of the family tree that she could find, where Mark might have sprung from.

Address? Useless. He'd just listed Doc's address as his own, when he'd signed up for the Firewalkers BBS.

Date of Birth? That was more interesting, but also a dead end. He'd given a birthday of October 18th, 1969, making him seventeen years old, for the FBBS, but Mark had used a different year, for his first login at Cafe Corner. Of course, it had to be a joke, but Mark had listed himself as eighty-seven years old, born in '99.

Which of course, reminded her of that incident when Melissa had called him a Narc. Before she'd abruptly reversed herself just as quickly and said that it had been a misunderstanding.

What had Melissa said? That Mark was much older than he'd claimed, not their age at all. What if Melissa had been right, the first time? Was Mark really an agent, of some sort?

If he was, he was exceedingly bad at it. He'd openly incited her to get that hydrazine formula for him, which would have made a clear case for entrapment. Alex had more or less confirmed that hydrazine had actually been produced, and in quantities large enough to be a much more serious offense than a little underage BBS hacking.

There was definitely something wrong with this picture.

She tried to imagine a scenario in which Melissa would have uncovered proof that Mark was, what? A spy? An agent? And then turned around and helped him, anyway? Not likely.

Beth sipped her coffee, her last cup for the evening, she reminded herself regretfully, as she walked back upstairs with the disk, which she stashed between the pages of a book, and replaced it on the shelf.

She heard the phone ringing in her bedroom, which was unusual at this hour. She tapped the space bar to quickly check that there had been no logins from Mark, and picked the phone up off its receiver.

"Hello?"

"Hey." It was Chris. He'd taken to talking with her more often lately, since their mutual crush had been acknowledged. But usually he paged her online, he'd never called her phone this late before. Her parents wouldn't hear, and wouldn't care, anyway, but it was unusual.

"You're up late," she observed, feeling oddly shy to be talking to a boy on the phone, this late at night.

"Couldn't sleep," he replied. He paused for a long moment. "I would've paged you," he trailed off.

"But you didn't want Melissa to be able to read the chat log?" Beth guessed.

"Yeah."

"I haven't found anything," she volunteered, anticipating his next question, as she got into bed, cradling the phone. "Still looking."

"Be careful, okay?" Chris sighed. "Actually…" he was quiet for a long time.

"Mmm?" she prompted.

"Beth, I think we need to call the police. Report him missing. Tell them what we know."

She considered for a few moments.

"You don't think that Melissa…" she trailed off, feeling silly to even voice such a thing. And disloyal.

"No," Chris answered quickly. "No, it's that I think she knows more than she's saying. I don't know. It doesn't make sense."

They were both silent, until finally Beth whispered, afraid to even give voice to what she was thinking. "I think he might be dead."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Beth sniffled quietly, muffled so that he barely heard it.

"Are you crying?" he asked, softly. She didn't reply. "Hey," he said, soothingly. "Get some sleep. We can figure this out tomorrow."

"Don't hang up yet," she whispered, pulling up the covers, and focusing on Chris' voice, trying to relax.

"I'm here," he replied.


	3. Chapter 3

**2024** , **Chicago**

It was late, and I should have been sleeping, but I had this half-formed idea, as I was drifting off. It wouldn't leave me alone, so eventually I decided to get up and do a little research.

Now it's 2 in the morning, and I'm on my second cup of coffee, but hey, who expects grad students to keep regular hours, anyway?

The head of department, that's who. But this little notion I had simply couldn't be ignored.

I'm probably totally wrong, and it'll wind up being another dead end; but still, I have to know for sure.

See, here's the thing; when I accidentally wound up back in 1986, I made some friends. They helped me get home. But, in doing so, somehow they all disappeared.

I've had years now to try and figure out what happened, but truthfully, I still just don't know. I haven't been able to float any theory that really makes sense. Maybe Doc knew something about what happened, it's possible that he did. But if he did, he never would talk about it with me. The whole thing seemed to confuse him. Maybe it was the multiple confluence of timelines, or the dementia? Some weird combination thereof?

Who knows. It's hard to live with the not knowing.

I spent countless hours those first few months, trying to trace what happened to them as individuals, but all of my research showed them, basically, evaporating from the public record, in 1986. And these were all computer-savvy people. There's just not much chance that any of them, let alone _all_ of them, would have made it to age fifty or so, leaving no trace of their existence anywhere on the web.

It's always been my experience that the early adopters of technology become more computer-savvy over time, not less.

But tonight, as I was drifting off to sleep, it occurred to me that I haven't ever tried to research the BBS, itself. It was how we kept in touch, shared files, left messages for each other, back in those days. The BBS had consisted of two separate systems; one for the general public, the other for the site's officers, or "crew" as we called ourselves, of which I was, briefly, one.

Could it be remotely possible that it still exists? Some sort of archived copy of it, maybe? Of course regular people don't use BBSes anymore; by the mid 90s, that ship had sailed, with the arrival of the world wide web.

I have to wonder, though, if maybe a few hardy souls might have kept a few of them going, just for grins, or as an nerdy little hobby. Some of the text-based games had been fun, and still might have some nostalgia players, I reasoned.

When I stop to think about it, it seems more and more plausible.

A Google search revealed that indeed, there _are_ actually still BBSes in operation. Including quite a few holdovers from that era. There's a website dedicated to cataloging the remaining ones, even.

I narrowed it down by region, and suddenly, there it was, midway down the list.

 **Firewalkers BBS, established 1984.** _Active, not accepting new users._

That's got to be the same one, right? Though, our BBS never had an actual name, back then. And while I don't know exactly which year that Beth and Melissa started our BBS, 1984 is a very reasonable guess. Only one way to find out, for sure.

It took me a little while to find and download and install the correct emulation software to access a BBS from 40 years ago, via the web, but sure enough, it connected, first try, and the title screen scrolled down, in black and green. Other than the addition of the BBS name, it's exactly the same as I remember.

I just sat back in my chair, absolutely stunned. It's really still there. Those _utter nerds_ somehow immortalized their BBS on the modern-day web. I feel like an archeologist, digging up a fascinating discovery about the lives of early netizens.

I'm not sure _what_ to make of the fact that the BBS still exists, really. The main menu indicates that nobody has logged in, at least not during the last year. But still, just seeing the familiar page again; it makes my chest kind of hurt, and my throat tight. Beth, and Melissa, and the rest of them had put a lot of work into setting up and running this BBS. Man, I miss those guys.

 **Enter user name and password.**

TheMartian, I typed it in automatically. The password, though, that actually took me a few minutes to remember. It was 'Asshole', due to that incident at the skating rink that time. I never did get around to changing it back. I tapped it in, and pressed Enter, not realizing that I was holding my breath. Hoping that maybe, just maybe...

 **Welcome back, TheMartian! It has been 13,912 days since your last log-in.**

 **You have (14 unread messages).**

Actual contact! They sent me messages! Even though we might as well be on different planets, those guys still managed to get messages to me, in spite of everything.

My emotions are all over the place, right now. Happy, excited, and…

Just seeing those familiar user names again, a rush of loneliness and guilt hits me in the gut. I miss those guys. And they're gone. Because of me; because of something I did. The guilt hits me so hard that it literally hurts, right now, to look at this list of messages that they left me, back in 1986.

The first was from Rick. **Maverick** , he'd called himself back then. A reference to Top Gun, though of course I hadn't gotten it at the time. Rick had wanted to join the Air Force. Be a pilot, maybe. It wasn't too hard to picture, really. I could see it, even, when I closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment. A flash came to me, Rick, in an Air Force uniform, flying a jet, fighting in a war, maybe?

What the fuck?

I blinked, shaking my head. This is unprecedented weird territory, even for me.

Was my sixth sense showing me something that had actually happened? Or was it just something that I wanted to imagine; Rick alive and happy and pursuing his goals? I wasn't sure. It seemed real, but how could it be possible?

Suddenly, I almost couldn't bear to actually read any of the messages from my long lost friends. The ones that I left behind, the ones that got lost because of me.

I scanned on down the list. **DayTripper** , that was little Beth Johanssen. Quiet and smart, and quick to learn, Beth had had a crazy amount of talent with programming. What would she have gone on to do, I asked myself. My sixth sense had an answer for that, too.

A brief flash of Beth came to me, suddenly; older than when I'd known her, but still quite young. My age, maybe. Successful; a software engineer working for some big Silicon Valley robotics project. A _spacecraft_? A space station? She was designing module software and communications systems that dealt with calculating light waves and-

It was real, I realized. That sense of truth I'd come to recognize. On some plane of existence, somewhere, somehow, even though the timelines made no sense. It was real.

Possible? Not possible? It's such a fuzzy line for me, now.

Seeing those user names again. It's doing weird things to my head, making me see stuff that's not there; maybe I'm going crazy. Losing my mind, like Doc.

I sat there staring at the list of unread messages for a long time, as it slowly started to sink in, that they wrote these messages in 1986, and they've been waiting to be read for nearly forty years.

At 3AM, exhaustion started to get the better of me, and I don't think I can possibly look at all of these in one go, anyway. It's just too much. This burden I've carried, these last eight years, is it about to get heavier? I'll just look at the first one. Then sleep, I promise myself.

 **(February 20, 1986 22:14)**

 **From: (Maverick)**

 **Subject: (None)**

 **They tell me you left town, but hopefully we'll still see you on here, when you get a chance to log back in.**

 **Have fun on planet Ork,**

 **MAV**


	4. Chapter 4

**1986**

Beth hung back, as Chris rang the doorbell, and they waited.

A dog barked from inside the house.

Finally, Beth ventured, "I guess he's not he-" and trailed off, as the door opened a crack. Doc peered out at them, eyebrows furrowed.

"Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying!" he yelled, slamming the door shut again.

Chris knocked again, as Beth called to him. "We just want to talk. Please. We need your help. Five minutes."

The door swung open, a few inches. Doc looked at them, warily. His eyes darted to Beth's book satchel.

"Not again," he muttered. He glanced from Chris to Beth, and up and down the street again, and skyward, for good measure, and then, sighing, ushered them into the house.

"We're looking for Mark," Chris began, as Beth took in their surroundings. Her eyes lighted on Doc's computer.

Doc seemed to be choosing his words, carefully. Finally he spoke, with a wide-eyed expression. "Not here," his words were brusque as he seemed to be in a hurry for them to leave. "Don't know how to get in touch with him," his voice trailed off, as he seemed unsure of what else to say. "Sorry kid," he looked at Chris.

"He's our friend," Chris tried to start again. "We're just worried about him, and it's really weird that he hasn't checked in, since he left. And we just-"

Doc had cut him off.

"I can't tell you anything," he began, "I don't _know_ anything," he amended, quickly. "But he's fine. Just fine. Nothing to worry about."

"He's fine," repeated Chris, like it was something he desperately wanted to believe. He let out a sigh of relief.

Doc nodded fervently, and when he spoke again, his voice had raised in pitch. "As far as it is possible to know," he finished, lamely. "And now, if you both will excuse me, I need to be getting back-"

Beth wasn't willing to let him off the hook as easily.

"Wait," she stopped him. "You don't know where he is?"

Doc nodded.

"But you do know he's okay."

He nodded again.

"Because _that_ makes sense." She rolled her eyes. "I happen to know a few things, too," she continued.

Doc looked at her, blankly. Chris looked startled, at her nerve, and curious.

"Like, I know about the hydrazine he was helping you make," she began. "How about that, for starters."

Doc pointed to the front door.

"Out!" he yelled. "They know too much," he mumbled to someone unseen, the pitch of his voice rising with every word. "Out," he repeated, his voice almost a squeak.

Beth stood firm.

"How about the fact that nearly everything he told us," she continued, "was a lie. And we helped him anyway!"

Doc glanced towards the wall behind them.

"I don't know, Tom," he murmured, apparently addressing a framed portrait of an unsmiling man. "What am I supposed to do?" His voice was a whisper. He spoke to a different portrait, next, as they stared.

With Doc distracted, Beth calmly walked the other way, out of his range of sight, and pocketed the disk out of Doc's upper disk drive, replacing it with one from her satchel.

"I don't know, I don't know," Doc murmured to someone that looked like Benjamin Franklin. "How am I supposed to… when he… if they… I just don't _know_." he finished, in a whisper, as Cerberus whined and leaned against his legs, as though she were attempting to console her master.

"You _promise_ that he's okay?" Chris asked again.

Doc nodded, though Chris wasn't sure who he was nodding at, him or Nikola Tesla. Doc's eyes looked unfocused, as though trying to assimilate and understand a whole encyclopedia at once.

"He's fine," Doc confirmed, again, sounding more confident this time. "He's… going to college. Chicago. Wrote him the letter of recommendation, myself," he added, sounding slightly amazed.

* * *

"Well, that was weird," Beth stated the obvious, as they made their way back towards town.

Chris nodded in agreement.

"When he started talking to those portraits," she shook her head, and grinned, and it was the first real smile Chris had seen in ages.

"Like something out of a movie," he added.

"Coffee?" Beth asked, rhetorically.

They were crossing the street towards the Automat, when Chris stopped in his tracks, and replied, "I don't think so," as he shook his head, pointing to a sign on the front door.

 **FOR LEASE**

"Aww." Beth groaned.

Chris sighed.

"Bound to happen eventually," he said, pragmatically, as they stood there for a moment. "Hardly any Automats left, these days, they're a dying breed."

Beth huffed.

"Well, I know I did _my_ part to keep them in business."

"You certainly did," he affirmed, with a smile, taking her hand.

"My house, then?" she asked, as they paused for a moment on the sidewalk.

Chris didn't answer for a moment. His eyes were fixed on a spot, across the intersection.

Beth squeezed his hand, knowing that he was thinking about that night.

"That was some night, huh?" she said, as Chris looked lost in thought.

"It was," he agreed, finally.

"We had our first dance," Beth smiled, as Chris put an arm around her waist, pulling her close for a hug.

"It got me to thinking, though," Chris replied, conversationally.

"Our dance?"

"No," he shook his head, grinning. "The other thing," he gestured back to the intersection across from the Automat. "That nurse. The one that almost…"

Beth nodded, in understanding.

"I think that's what I want to do," he began, looking down at her, gauging her reaction. "I want to be a doctor. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure."

Beth was silent for a long time, as they walked.

"Wow," she managed, finally. "That's big." Her eyes were wide, as she looked up at him, surprised. "A doctor. Dr. Beck," she tried it out, experimentally.

Chris grinned.

"What do you think?" he asked her. "It's just… you're the first person I've told. I've been thinking about it since that night, but I needed to come up with some sort of plan, but I guess, what I really need…" he trailed off, unsure of what he really needed.

"Someone to tell you that it's a good choice? That you totally should?"

Beth stopped, and looked up at him, as serious as he'd ever seen her.

"You'll be an amazing doctor," she told him, sincerely. "It's perfect."

Chris bowed his head, and hugged her. "Thanks," he said, quietly. "For taking me seriously."

"Any time," she replied, eyes widening at the expression on his face.

He bent his head, and cradled her face between his hands, looking her in the eyes as he kissed her, softly and sweetly.


	5. Chapter 5

**2025, Chicago**

My grandmother warned me, early and often, that the winters up here get very cold, but this is kind of absurd, even by Chicago standards. That famous wind is _howling_ outside, and it has been for days now. The sidewalks are solid ice, and the temperature hasn't gone above freezing in a week. Classes here at Northwestern were cancelled yesterday and today, which is pretty unusual. Native Chicagoans, even, want to stay huddled in their homes like rabbits.

You'd think I'd be used to it by now, after eight years. Chicago's my hometown now, and I can't ever see myself going back to Hill Valley except to visit.

But it's taken some getting used to.

On nights like this, when the wind is tearing against the windows and doors; shaking the whole building; it makes me uneasy. Makes me feel like every bit of the loner that I am, cut off from the rest of the world.

Just have to make do with whatever provisions I happen to have on hand, when it's like this out there.

I don't like it at all, this feeling of being held captive by the elements.

Sometimes when it's like this, it makes me feel better, a little bit at least, to read back over some of the messages I've kept, from the crew. I've read them so many times now, I know them all by heart, but it makes me feel a little less alone. Because someday, somehow, and I still have no idea how or when, I'm going to see those guys again.

Just a matter of time.

* * *

 **From: DayTripper (February 20, 1986) 23:33**

 **Subject: (None)**

 **Doc Brown tells us that you're going to college, so I guess you'll get this message eventually. Even if you're on the other side of the country, wherever you are, this BBS is set up so that you can log in and keep in touch with us.**

 **Thanks for giving our mutual friend the helpful advice, the other night. Seems to have helped.**

 **-DT-**

 **From: DayTripper (February 20, 1986) 23:34**

 **Subject: (None)**

 **By the way, your friend Ray nearly beat me. Our last match was a draw.**

* * *

Like I said, just a matter of time. And like all matters of time, it's a delicate balance. Waiting. Keeping the secret. Trying not to let all the questions drive me crazy. All the not knowing.

I wonder if Dad ever did get his win against Beth. So many times, I've wanted to ask him about those times. Ever since I got back.

But I've been too afraid to chance it, Dad suddenly realizing that we actually met. Too dangerous, of course. He's never been much of one to reminisce, and that hasn't changed, even if a lot of his life got rearranged.

It's tempting, though. Very.

 _Hey Dad, what do you remember from early 1986?_

But I just can't.

That sixth sense kicked in, hard, back before I even knew what it was, and I _knew_ not to ask.

There's only been one moment when someone from 1986 actually did recognize me.

It was my first Christmas back from Chicago, when I visited my grandfather. He immediately knew me, from that time he hit me with the car. I guess it had to be pretty weird for him, because he just shrugged it off, attributed it to his bad memory, and spoke no more of it.

My grandmother Watney, on the other hand, alive, somehow, in this new timeline I created, doesn't remember the 1986 me, at all. One of the more unusual aspects of my return has been this; _she_ remembers a whole lifetime of watching me grow up. As far as I'm concerned, though, I met _her_ the day I came back to 2016.

Any time Nana starts a sentence with "Remember that time…" I have to nod and smile and pretend like I do remember. I don't, though. And honestly, it kind of bums me out that I don't. She's a really nice lady. I think I might have inherited my love of science from her. She was a single parent in the 80s, which had to have been pretty rough, but she knows a lot of scientific terminology from her career in nursing, and she's interested in horticulture and other scientific disciplines, as well.

My parents are both only children, and I'm their only child, so I never really had all that much family to begin with. It's been kind of an unexpected gift to have a grandmother again.

* * *

In her email, Beth mentioned that I'd given our "mutual friend" some helpful advice. It sure sounds like Chris actually went for it, and made his move. (It was so obvious that she liked him, seriously.)

I can't help but wonder if they really got together; how it worked out, if they're still together, even, maybe. First loves do have a way of not working out, of which I'm all too aware.

Mindy Park was mine. My best friend, back in high school. I spent two years working up the courage to tell her how I felt. And things were okay, at first, when I made it back to 2016. I came back to find that we'd been together for ages by then, which made for some interesting times. Good thing I'm a quick learner.

Those first few nights. I get chills just thinking about it.

For my part, it was kind of hard, though, to be with Mindy and not be totally honest with her. I really _wanted_ to tell her everything that had happened, and I simply couldn't do it. Even if i could have, she would have thought I was crazy; and frankly, for those first few months I suspect a lot of people would have agreed with her.

Eventually, I suppose, my natural response to having to keep up with that façade, while dealing with the loss of my friends, all the uncertainty, was to distance myself from her. Everyone, really.

Mindy, pragmatic as always, tactfully suggested that we go on hiatus until we were done with school. Well, for her, that was about two years ago.

Spoiler alert: she didn't ever come knocking at my door.

I can take a hint.

It's okay, I guess. It was a longshot. I still really miss her, though. I miss our friendship, as much or more than our brief run as "more than friends." Believe me though, I miss that, too. Ten times a day, I hear something interesting or think of something funny and I want to tell her about it.

But I can't. Not anymore. Because now things are _awkward_. We're not that close. Casual acquaintances, I guess. I hate it. Now we're just occasional text-friends.

There hasn't been anyone important since her, either, for basically the same reason. I simply don't know where I'm going, or where I'm going to wind up, and why would I needlessly drag another person along for _that_ ride? I've reverted back to my natural inner lone wolf tendencies.

She's a tough act to follow, really. Nobody else has ever gotten under my skin the way she did. Not even close. Mindy really understood me, the real me, the under-the-hood workings of Mark Watney. And she knew it; at least on some subconscious level, that I was holding something back. That she wasn't getting the full disclosure. She knew it, and eventually it got between us, and that was that. There's been nobody else who can even hold a candle to her. She was the whole package, the once-in-a-lifetime.

No wonder I never date.

This tends to worry my mother, I guess. She really liked Mindy a lot, and spent a fair bit of time trying to persuade me that the breakup was a bad idea. She _still_ asks me about Mindy, on occasion, eight years down the road.

If I'm being totally honest with myself, the idea of ever feeling like that again about someone is absolutely terrifying.

Every once in awhile, Mindy will drop me a text from Houston to tell me what she's doing, but it's never anything about her personal life. It's usually more like, she's got this fancy job title, working orbital mechanics, but if you listen to her tell it, all she really does is take pictures with various satellites when her boss says to. She makes it sound super boring, even though I'm sure it's not, really.

Hell, she works for _NASA_. It was her dream job, and they picked her up, right out of grad school. How lucky can you get?

What did they used to call that? The humble-brag?

Well, she's got it perfected.

Unlike me, working as an adjunct while I finish the Neverending Story of educations. I have another three years to go, at the very least.

Three more years of teaching freshmen the basics of Botany while juggling my own classes and research and dissertation and then… what? I'm going to take my doctorate and my double Master's degree and do what any Mechanical Engineering Botanist would do. Find a job. Doing… something. God only knows what. Maybe I'll have a better plan in three years.

For now, I have to just have to keep my focus.

Wait out the storm.


	6. Chapter 6

**April 21, 1986**

The booming sound of Rick and Alex laughing uproariously downstairs, broke Beth's concentration. Wanting to see what all the fuss was about, and needing a break, anyway, she headed downstairs.

"An empty bottle of gin!" Rick muttered, as Alex grinned and pointed at the screen, where workers in hard hats were digging around in the dirt, looking flustered.

Chris, who had apparently been studying, set his textbook aside when he saw Beth on the stairs, and motioned for her to join him on the far sofa. She obliged him, launching herself onto his lap; his notes and textbook went flying, as she grinned, and he rolled his eyes at her antics, but wrapped his arms around her waist, anyway, giving her an affectionate hug.

Melissa glanced up at her, from the notebook full of paperwork. She seemed as though she'd been lost in thought.

" _Well, folks, it looks like we've struck out,"_ Geraldo Rivera ventured, on-screen, sounding uncomfortable.

"Oh," Beth leaned forward, "is that the Al Capone thing, still?"

Rick nodded, still chuckling. "They made this great big production of it. Two hours we've been sitting here, while they say they're gonna open Capone's vault, any minute now, on live TV."

"I think," Chris noted, dryly, "that they may have mentioned the possibility of the vault having dead bodies inside it, oh, maybe a dozen times."

"Or a treasure," Alex chimed in. "This is the craziest thing ever I see on the TV."

"Two hours," Rick repeated, shaking his head, "while they've been trying to get the vault open, there in Chicago underneath some old downtown hotel, and they finally blast it open and there's _nothing_ inside. Just an old empty bottle of gin. Whoops!"

"That look on Geraldo Rivera's face just now," Beth said, giggling, "Anyone else get the feeling that he's wishing that gin bottle wasn't empty?"

Chris snorted.

"That dude is getting so smashed tonight, you know he is," Rick grinned. "How embarrassing." He stood up. It was late on a Monday night, and they all had school in the morning. Alex followed suit.

"You think Mark was watching this?" Chris asked, suddenly. "I mean, he's in Chicago, right?"

Melissa seemed to flinch a little at that, Beth thought.

" _Everyone_ was watching this crazy thing, tonight. Even Mork, probably." Rick said, though the laughter was quickly leaving his voice. "Wonder why we never heard from that guy," he added, glancing furtively at Melissa, who was now flipping through her sheaf of paper again. "I left him a message on the board," he added.

"So did I," said Chris, shrugging. "I think all of us have. Guess he'll get them eventually."

"Can't believe he'd launch that rocket without us." Rick frowned, in mock-betrayal, as he and Alex headed for the front door, together.

* * *

Once the guys had left, Melissa seemed reluctant to leave. Beth had been trying to decipher some of the weirder aspects from the schematics from Doc's disk, that evening, and she was kind of anxious to get back to it. She had long since made a copy and replaced the original, of course.

She and Melissa were watching MTV, now that the Al Capone's Vault show had ended. It seemed to her that Melissa had something she wanted to discuss. They were best friends; they told each other everything, but lately it seemed like Melissa had been keeping a secret from her. Beth had been keeping a secret as well; that she hadn't stopped looking for Mark.

Finally, Melissa cleared her throat. Beth looked up, to see Melissa holding out a letter to her. She took it and scanned through it quickly, looking back at Melissa, in shock.

"The Naval Academy?"

Melissa nodded.

"You got accepted to the Naval Academy?" She hugged her, impulsively. "What the _hell_ , Melissa!" Beth grinned at her friend. Melissa shrugged, sheepishly, with an uncertain grin. "And a full scholarship!"

" _Everyone_ gets a full scholarship," Melissa volunteered, self-deprecatingly, as though that minor detail made her feat into something completely ordinary.

They sat in silence for awhile, as Beth re-read the acceptance packet. _Five years of service in the Navy?_ Finally, she sighed, and looked back at Melissa.

"You don't seem very excited about this," she observed.

"I am, though," Melissa argued, a little bit of the giddiness one might expect beginning to seep through the facade. "I'm really, really excited," she said, grinning. "It's just…" She trailed off, and shook her head. She looked at her hands.

"You think it'll be weird, being a girl there?" Beth knew, of course, that the Naval Academy accepted women now; it was still quite rare, though.

"No, that's not it, really. I don't think it's going to be easy," she replied, with her trademark flair for the understatement. "I think my parents are pretty worried about it. They knew I was applying, but I don't think they expected that I really had a shot of getting in."

"Wow." Beth glanced over a list of prerequisites, and blinked. Four years of school, and five years of service. It sounded like a lifetime, to her. "So, you're sure about this? You're really going?"

Melissa nodded.

"I have to," she said, "of course I'm going to do it. Who says no to an opportunity like this?"

"Then what's the problem?"

"I just wish you could come with me," she admitted, ruefully. "All of you guys. I don't want to leave any of you behind." She smiled at Beth, and under her breath, "I promised," she added.

They were silent for a long time.

Finally, Beth ventured, "You can always use the board to keep in touch, can't you?"

Melissa sighed.

"Yes, that's true. But we need to find a way," she paused, thinking, "to make it permanent. To keep it online, forever." She glanced at her hands, and then back at Beth. "You think it'll still be working in ten years? Twenty? Thirty years?" Beth couldn't quite decipher her expression, but it seemed almost like guilt.

"Well," she noted thoughtfully, "I think that it might be _possible_ before too long. I mean, if that whole big hypertext thing with all the links ever happens." She thought for a moment. "Wonder what we'll be doing in thirty years? As fast as technology is advancing, things are going to be a lot different by then, aren't they?"

"They will be." Melissa agreed. She sighed again. "The thing is," she trailed off, as though she wasn't sure how much she could say. Finally she continued, "I made this promise. And at the time, I thought I could keep it."

She had to be talking about Mark, Beth thought. She had that same conflicted, guilty look that Beth had come to recognize. _Chris was right, she knows what happened_.

"I need to tell you something, actually," Beth said, hesitantly. "About Mark."

Melissa looked at her, suddenly.

"Did he tell _you_ , too?" she asked, surprised.

"Chris and I went to talk to Doc Brown," she admitted, looking up.

Melissa's eyes were wide and shocked.

"I went to talk to him, too," she blurted out. "Right after he went back. Mark gave me that email address, but Doc grabbed it right out of my hand and burned it! He said that Mark shouldn't have given it to me, that I couldn't… that I shouldn't try to contact him, that it might mess things up even more."

Beth shook her head, trying to understand.

"Right after he went back?" she asked, slowly. It was exactly the wrong question to have asked, she could see immediately, as Melissa's eyebrows went up, understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes.

"Wait, wait…" she said, "Okay, what was it that _you_ needed to tell _me_? About Mark. Start over," she asked, ruefully, shaking her head.

"I've been doing some, um… research," she said. "On what happened to Mark. What he was trying to do."

"You and Chris just wouldn't leave it alone," Melissa said. Beth didn't think she sounded angry exactly. It sounded like what it was, more of a long-suffering annoyance that Chris and Beth hadn't listened to her.

"Well, no." Beth tried to defend her actions. "We couldn't. He was our _friend_ , and we want to know what happened to him. It was weird. It's still weird. You know what happened, and you won't just _tell_ us. We just wanted to know that he's okay, want him to know that we're okay. Nobody's mad at him. So we started looking into things, on our own."

"And what did you find?" Melissa prompted, finally, voice flat.

"That he wasn't who he said he was? That you were probably right about him, in the first place? That he and Doc Brown were involved in some weird, dangerous shit together?"

"That sounds about right," Melissa muttered.

"But it's not just the hydrazine," Beth continued. "There's something bigger than just that. It wasn't for some high school science project. They were making it for something else. It was going to power this… reactor thing. I know a few things about reactors, and this is… Well, he calls it a flux capacitor, and I'm not sure what it can do. I can tell you that it's dangerous as hell, though, as much energy as he's trying to channel into this thing."

"What! He's _already_ completed the design?" Melissa shook her head. "Oh my god, this just gets weirder and weirder. And how did _you_ get ahold of it?" She trailed off, shaking her head. "Nevermind. I don't want to know."

"Do _you_ know what it does?" Beth persisted.

Melissa was silent for a long time.

"Yes," she replied, finally.


	7. Chapter 7

**1986**

The crew had gathered, once more, in Beth's parent's living room, and they fell silent as Melissa cleared her throat and began.

"I'm not going to lie. It was still pretty bad. And we've still got a lot of work ahead of us." She glanced at Rick. "Especially you. You're still not even in the running." Rick frowned, looking at the floor. His fists were clenched, and Melissa knew he was getting frustrated with his lack of progress with the selection committee.

"What about me?" Alex asked, anxiously. His was the most difficult selection; there would be only a single astronaut chosen from the European pool, which covered fourteen different countries. To put himself into the running, Alex Vogel was going to have to really shine. Twenty-first century chemistry was something of a snake-pit, he'd been surprised to discover.

"You came closer, Alex," Melissa answered, reassuringly. "From the info Doc could get his hands on, you were the twelfth pick." She handed him another stack of CVs, studies and standards to go over.

"Twelfth!" He muttered it, in disgust. " _Zwölftel_." But it was better than twentieth, the last time, and he was immediately back to the drawing board, trying to think of new ways to bypass the competition, as he shuffled through the papers, looking for the next thing that he could possibly twist to his advantage.

"And you two." Melissa looked at her list.

Chris hugged Beth, and murmured something into her ear.

"What about us?" Beth prompted. "What was different about this run?"

"You're still on the crew," Melissa shrugged, "but not Chris. He would have been third choice for flight surgeon this time, except for being married to _you_. You're their first and only pick, and they won't pick anyone that would conflict with their number one choice. No married crewmates." She sighed. "I guess you guys know what you're going to have to do."

"I can't do that," Chris stated flatly. "I just can't. Please don't ask."

Melissa didn't say anything.

"I'll just _demand_ that they pick him, then." Beth ventured. "I won't fly without him. Why don't we try _that_ again, now that he's getting so close to the top of the list?"

"You know I don't want to make the crew that way," Chris reminded her, quietly.

"Yeah, well, maybe we don't have the luxury of making this happen exactly the way we want it to," she retorted. "Mark dies, if we don't. Need I remind you?"

"And it didn't work, the other time, anyway. They just bumped _you_ from the running, too."

Melissa closed her eyes, and pinched her chin.

"Okay. So what are we going to change for the next run? Rick? What have you got?"

"Doc said he'd get the bigger narrative of wartime casualties and incidents, for me to look over, this time. I'm sure I can figure out how to save a few more of their sorry asses."

"It's going to be a pretty short war," Chris reminded them. "How many people will be getting the Medal of Honor, this go?"

"Three," she said, consulting the report.

"Was Rick one of them, this time?"

Melissa shook her head. "I've got it here," she handed the sheaf of paper to Rick. "Decorated, yes, but no. No MOH for Major Martinez."

"Major?" Rick looked up, with the first hints of a smile. "I get promoted _during_ the war, then?"

"Don't let it go to your head," she smiled.


	8. Chapter 8

**Schiaparelli Crater**

Sometimes he wished his sixth sense would just shut the fuck up. Any minute now, he should be able to see the MAV. He was almost there. The long journey was nearly over. But it didn't stop his sixth sense from continually trying to tell him things. It had been going absolutely crazy, the past year and a half.

But it was nothing, absolutely nothing, in comparison to the crazy thought he'd just had. He'd finally figured out an explanation. Something that finally made sense.

All these years, he'd never known why it was happening. Why had one little trip to 1986 made him into some sort of weird clairvoyant, always knowing the right answers, but still unable to avoid winding up like this, stranded on the surface of Mars?

But now he finally got it. Things were starting to click. The more he thought about it, the more he knew he was right.

 _Someone was trying to save his life._ That had to be it. Someone was rewriting history, again and again, as they tried to find the outcome that would keep Mark alive, to see him safely through. Someone had built another flux capacitor, Doc most likely, and was trying to nudge events to break his way!

A tiny shadow on the horizon, the very first glimpse of the MAV, there it was! The Rover had been pinging with it, more or less constantly, the last day, but to finally lay eyes on it. The moment found him barely able to breathe.

 _Am I right?_ He asked his sixth sense, hoping that it was listening.

 _Yes_. _Promise._ The answer came through, loud and clear, as though he was talking to a real person.

 _Hermes is coming back for me? This is going to work?_ I'm not just totally insane? He didn't ask that last one with any real conviction; he didn't want to know the answer.

 _Yes._ The MAV was slowly coming into view, then, a towering tiny skyscraper, still so many kilometers away. It represented home and safety and everything he hadn't had, for so long.

"Doc, you crazy, stubborn son of a bitch," he said, unable to hold back a smile.

No wonder his memory got fried; the thought came to him, unbidden. Oh, Jesus. Guilt flooded through him, where happiness had flowed, a moment before. One trip forward through time, that was one thing. It got confusing sometimes, but he could cope with it. But how many trips had Doc made, on his behalf, to get him this far?

Dozens? Hundreds?

Jesus Christ. Had he known what was going to happen? The last time he'd seen Doc, he'd been… Wait a minute.

Doc had died, though. Many years ago, now. Hadn't he?

He could remember getting the call, from Mindy. He thought so, anyway. Oh god, it was so confusing, when he tried to remember back that far, now. Memories were hazy and tangled together, and nothing made sense anymore.

" _I thought you'd want to know,"_ she'd said, in that unforgettable voice of hers. " _He died in his sleep last night. He went peacefully. I'm so sorry, Mark."_

He couldn't remember any funeral, though. Could he? Wouldn't he have gone?

" _I thought you'd want to know,"_ she'd said, and somehow it was that same phone call, that same voice, " _He's been doing about the same-_ "

Which one had been real? Both? Neither?

He couldn't remember either of them, particular clearly. And suddenly, it was like he couldn't remember it at all, and he had to wonder whether or not he'd imagined the whole thing.

That happened, sometimes, when he thought back on it. Was it because those memories had been overwritten? Shaded over, with what had actually happened, when Doc had changed history? And then changed it again?

Wait.

Was that why Doc couldn't remember Alex, and the rest of the crew?

They'd called themselves the Firewalkers, back then, right? He could still remember that much, though the memory was foggy, and frayed around the edges, after all this time. Alex. Melissa, she'd known about everything, and… what were the rest of their names, again?

He couldn't remember them.

Had they been real? The MAV was getting bigger now, he could make out its tall conical form, quite clearly against the red Martian sunrise. Was he dreaming?

If they had been real, then what the hell had happened to them?

And if they hadn't been, then why… why was all of this happening?

* * *

 **From: Disk0 (June 28, 1986)**

 **Subject: Wait for us.**

 **We'll come back for you.**

 **I promise you'll see us again.**

 **~Melissa~**

* * *

The moment had arrived. It was now or never. Now and forever. Time didn't really have the same meaning to him, anymore.

 _You sure this is going to be okay?_ he asked.

No answer. His sixth sense had gone, worryingly, completely silent.

"Fuel Pressure green," a voice came, over the comlink. Who was that, anyway? Mark thought. It was a woman's voice, not Anderson, the SysOp from Ares III. "Engines are in alignment. Communications normal. Ready for preflight, Commander."

"Copy," came _another_ female voice. Who the hell _were_ these people?! And where was Commander Moore, he wondered. What the fuck was going on?

"Go," the first voice responded.

Would it be rude for me to ask, he wondered. Who are you guys, and what have you done with my crew?

"Guidance."

"Go."

"Remote Command."

"Go," a man's voice that time, when it ought to have been a woman's. Their pilot had a chirpy Southern voice, not that deep booming voice that reminded him of…

"Pilot."

Oh, shit! That's _me_ , he thought, wildly.

"Go," he said, hoping that his voice didn't sound as crazy as he felt, right now.

"Telemetry," came the second woman's voice, again.

"Go."

"Recovery."

"Go," came another man's voice. But it wasn't their flight surgeon, Dr. Carter, it was another stranger's voice. Mark's head was spinning, as his fists clenched around the restraints.

"Secondary Recovery."

"Go," the final crewmember had what sounded like… a German accent, instead of a Spanish one.  
 _  
I'm an honorary German, myself_ , the thought came to him, unbidden, remembering that time in the lab, so long ago, when he and Alex and Doc had shared a beer together, after the long night making hydrazine for the… why _had_ they been doing that? That sounded really dangerous, now that he thought about it. That shit was explosive, and he should know.

They were counting down, now.

This broken-down, patched-together wreck he'd created was about to be put to the ultimate test. Do or die time, he thought.

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

 _I can totally lose them_ , he thought. I wonder when-

He was pushed down into his seat so hard that he couldn't breathe, as the MAV launched with unfathomable force.

A blinding flash, _Oh my god, what have I done?_ and a sonic boom, and what was going _on_ with that fucking canvas, he thought, hazily, as it was ripping and thrashing around, and for a second he thought he could see fireworks. Stars, they're stars, he corrected himself, and he knew no more.

* * *

What the hell happened, he thought. It hurt to open his eyes, it hurt to move, to breathe, everything hurt. Everything looked red.

Broke some blood vessels in my eyes, he thought, or maybe it was just Mars, being Mars.

He reached for the radio on his wrist, "MAV to _Hermes_ ," he whispered.

"He's okay!"

"Stay put, Mark, we're coming back for you, just like I promised," Melissa's voice? It was, it couldn't be, but it was.

"I'll just uh… I'll just stay right here, then," he mumbled.

"Still a smartass, I see," she replied, with that appraising voice he remembered, so well.

"Some things," he winced at the pain in his chest, "never change."

It seemed like something out of a dream, something that happened a long time ago, or to someone else, as he drifted in and out of consciousness, as the MAV tumbled in freefall towards the intercept, waiting. Problems, there were problems, of course there were. There were always problems. _Hermes_ had to slow down for him. _Wait for us_ , she'd said.

He waited.

Waited while they kept trying, kept looking for the right answer, kept right on breaking all the rules for him. Made a bomb and blew the VAL for him. As the utter insanity played out, on the rapidly approaching _Hermes_ , Mark just sat there in the ruined MAV and smiled. He knew it was all going to be okay. His memories were starting to converge again; he knew what was real again. Doc had enlisted these guys to come rescue his ass. They were the only ones who could get it right.

"I got visual on the MAV."

He didn't expect it to be Chris, but there he was, suddenly, on a tether that led back to _Hermes_ , back to home. He operated the MMU with a practiced nonchalance that made Mark grin, like hey, no big deal, I'll just swing over to the MAV and chill with Mark, like it's nothing at all.

"Heya," Chris greeted him, casually, as though it had only been a couple of days instead of fifty years. As though they were just passing in the halls at Hill Valley High, instead of wearing EVA suits in deep space.

"Jesus Christ," he said, just looking at him, as Chris clipped a carabiner to the connectors on his suit.

"Hey now," Chris replied, shoving them off from the broken hull of the MAV, steady and graceful, "I'm not the one that keeps coming back from the grave, man. That's all you."

"Funny." Alex was reeling them in, towards Airlock 2. "I didn't know it was gonna be you guys," he mumbled, as his vision began to grey-out, around the edges, from the pain. "I came out here with a different crew."

"Yeah," Chris replied. "Bunch of punks. Took us a little while to get their jobs out from under them," he snorted. "Doc must have had to pull us a few rabbits out of his hat."

Mark digested that, for a moment. "They're… they're okay, though, right?"

"They're Ares Five," he replied, absently, as Mark watched _Hermes_ coming into range. He felt like he could almost touch it. And then he was reaching out for a handhold, there in Airlock 2, grabbing it, closing his EVA suit glove around it, as Alex was grinning at him, and shutting the airlock.

"Airlock 2, outer door is closed, Commander," Alex reported, on the comlink, as Mark stared at him.

"Last we checked, anyway," Chris continued, as the rest of the crew cheered, from the bridge. "We don't get any more-"

"Mork!" came Rick's booming voice, over the com, "What're you doing on my ship! No aliens allowed!"

"Give a bro a ride home, huh? C'mon, please?" Mark joked back, weakly, as Chris floated him down the corridor towards Carter's medbay.

"Nanoo, nanoo," came the answer.

" _Shazbot_ ," Mark muttered to him, in response, as his broken ribs were screaming in his chest again.

"What have you been doing to yourself, man," Chris said, grinning, as he helped Mark escape from the EVA suit. Beth appeared, in the doorway, after a while, once the ship was repressurized, and she gave him a high-five, a painful one, truth be told.

But her eyes were looking past him, then, and she was looking at Chris like she hadn't seem him in years, as he worked, getting painkillers for Mark and taping up Mark's broken ribs. It was uncomfortably hot in here, holy shit, the way they were _looking_ at one another.

"He's going to be fine," Beth said, then, almost disbelievingly. "I can't believe we really pulled this off."

"Damned right, we did," Chris growled, not even looking at Mark, "K, man, get a shower as soon as it doesn't hurt. 'Cause seriously." He made a face, holding his nose, "I gotta go do something now."

"Uh, okay?" Chris was already gone.

"Waited _way_ too long for this," he said, grabbing Beth around the waist and floating with her, to the corridor, where Mark couldn't see what was happening.

He could _hear_ , though, and he was blushing, listening to them carry on, until they came up for air, a few minutes later.

" _Now_ will you marry me?" Chris asked Beth, surely the first man to propose aboard _Hermes_. Mark was almost jealous of them; that was a pretty cool _first_. Mark couldn't hear her answer, but he assumed that it was a yes, from the rather enthusiastic noises that were emerging from the hall.


	9. Chapter 9

It's landing day, and I can't wait.

Sure, it's winter, down there on the surface, and it's not like the NSBRI is going to let me out of their clutches any time soon, anyway.

But I just can't wait to get down there. Breathe some fresh air. Have something delicious for dinner, and a cold beer. (Even if Alex does like to argue that beer should be served at room temperature. Fuck that.)

Most of all, I want to finally put together the last few missing pieces of the puzzle.

You see, I still don't know who was helping me out, while I was stranded on Mars.

It wasn't Doc, of course, because as you'll recall, he died. Many years ago, now. My official memory now has him dying, the year before I graduated college, a few years after he'd suffered a stroke. At that point, he hadn't done much work on the rescue plan in quite awhile and things had skewed off course.

Commander Moore, and my original Ares III crew, had first, refused to double-back to Mars for the rescue mission, opting instead for me to take my chances with Iris 2. Well, okay, _originally_ they hadn't even known of the _existence_ of any Rich Purnell maneuver, until a certain young computer expert with JPL sent Henderson an anonymous email telling him how _she_ would go about sneaking the formulae for the course into the data dump.

It didn't do any good, naturally. The crew didn't want to do it, as previously mentioned.

Not going to take it personally; I get it. It was a lot of added mission time and danger that they hadn't signed up for. And don't get me wrong, they were a good crew and I liked them a lot, as far as I can remember, but I wasn't going to take a bullet for any of them, or anything.

Well, in almost every outcome, Iris 2 was a laughable disaster. Depending on how long JPL took about getting it to Jiquan, it either blew up at launch, or disintegrated when it hit Martian atmosphere, or it tumble-rolled so far across the Martian landscape that I couldn't get to it in time, before I was too weak from starvation to go fetch it. As far as I've been told, anyway. I have no memories or weird prescience of any of those timelines (since it hasn't happened yet, and thankfully, won't _be_ happening. I will avoid any further missions to Mars, just to be sure.)

The Firewalkers had appointed themselves my rescue crew, and originally they'd all envisioned that they'd be doing it as Ares IV. But that just wasn't happening.

That was when someone _else_ , apparently, not Doc or the crew, started tampering with the outcomes. Someone, and none of us know who, was trying to finish what he'd started. Breaking all the rules to save my life, since I'd broken all the rules to save his.

Well, what all of them had started, really, since the whole Rescue Mark Watney plan was hatched back in 1986, before the Ares Program had even been dreamed up. How's that for weird? But the crew didn't do a lot of time traveling themselves, you see. Apart from that one trip forward apiece to make themselves into my contemporaries.

Doc had already learned, the hard way, that you can't just go back and relive the same bit of history more than a few times, before the human brain just doesn't react properly anymore. A couple of reruns makes a guy a little eccentric. More than a few retreads, and people are going to think he's a nutcase and commit his ass to a state hospital.

The way to change history, in other words, is to influence _future_ events by knowing in advance what's headed your way, and to change your actions accordingly.

And apparently, our unknown intrepid hero was pretty fucking awesome at it. Working behind the scenes to watch, without being involved. Making all the right calls. Keeping the secret. It can't have been easy. And I owe that person a beer, at the very least.

* * *

Their seats had risen away from the capsule, a few inches, in preparation for the landing.

And there it was. A heavy, rattling _thump_ , as they made groundfall safely.

Mark and the crew cheered, and then sat back for the long wait, for the ground crew to come help them pop open the hatch.

After a few minutes, there were vibrations, shaking through the capsule. Helicopters, outside, Mark thought.

Chris had unstrapped everyone, and safely stowed away the crash belts, for the next _Hermes_ crew's use.

Finally, came the wrenching noise, and a beam of bright sunlight, and that fresh, clean, wonderful scent of cold desert air, as the hatch opened, and the ground crew ushered them out.

Mark sank to his knees, right there in the yellow sands of West Texas, and buried his hands into the ground, grabbing into a handful of desert sand and rocks. Desperately happy to be back, his eyes were squeezed closed as he fought back tears.

"Give him a minute," someone ordered the ground crew, in an unforgettable voice. "He's being weird, again." She laughed, as Mark's head jerked up, in sudden understanding.

It was Mindy Park, standing there in NASA uniform.

 _Are you fucking kidding me?_

He got to his feet, as he watched the last of the crew boarding the chopper back to Houston.

She advanced on him, looking for something, it appeared. Understanding. Like she wasn't sure how much he knew.

"You?" He finally managed to get it out. Mindy smiled at him, all grown up. More beautiful than she'd ever been as a girl. Mark's legs were already protesting the heavy new gravity of his home planet, and he shuffled his feet in the sand, as he made his way to her.

"Always," she smiled up at him, as he practically collapsed into her arms. Holding on to her. Crushing her against him in as tight a hug as his arms were capable of.

She still fit against him just perfectly, her head against the hollow of his throat, her arms around his neck. The sweet smell of her, and the feel of her skin. It felt exactly how he'd remembered it, only this time was better, because...

"I'm never letting go," he said, as his voice turned to gravel, and one of his knees started to buckle. She caught him, with a wry chuckle. "Thanks for saving my life."

"Guess I did, huh?"

He kissed her, and she smiled, against his mouth.

The ground crew was looking on, a little uncomfortably, as they held the helicopter door.

"Don't want to miss your ride home, _again,_ do you, babe?"

 **THE END**


End file.
